BREAKING: “Unscreened Baby” May Be on the Loose at Newark Airport

Got this on the Twitter machine a few minutes ago – both sources are reporters:

@NYDNBklynCt: MT @TamerELG: No joke: police scanner crackling with news of a "security breach" at Newark involving an unscreened baby

Obviously another dramatic America-protecting TSA operation is in full swing there.

Trying to find out what the police 10-code is for "unscreened baby."

The odds that this is actually something material seem extremely low, unless the TSA goons at Newark have cleaned up their act in the past year. See "TSA officials confirm string of Newark airport security lapses," New Jersey Star-Ledger (Feb. 15, 2011) (describing five lapses there during a 30-day period, one involving a knife and the other, incredibly, a dead dog). Oh, also, some of them were just criminals:

The security lapses are apart from the deliberate wrongdoing by TSA staffers that took place repeatedly at a checkpoint in Terminal B from September 2009 to October 2010, when prosecutors say a screener stole up to $30,000 in cash from passengers as they were screened.

Coincidentally, or not, as many of you are clearly aware, four TSA employees were recently indicted for taking bribes to let drug couriers sail through checkpoints at LAX faster than dead dogs at Newark. This points to one of the weaker points in the TSA's continual argument for ever-increasing and ever-more-expensive security measures — they still require human beings to operate, so can always be circumvented.

Anyway, the developing story right now is this unscreened-baby drama apparently unfolding at Newark International Airport. More details as (or if) they become available.